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Business Insider•June 13, 2020

Associated Press

• After weeks of lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the US is on its way to reopen the economy. However, a number of states have been reporting spikes in new cases throughout the country.
• While the culpability could appear to be on a so-called “rushed reopening,” one expert said the blame should instead be placed on the lack of a comprehensive testing and contact tracing system in the US.
• Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, joined more than 30 other cross-disciplinary experts to co-author detailed guidance, titled “Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done,” on the necessary levels of testing and tracing to safely reopen communities.
• Allen told Business Insider that the US’ approach to slow the spread instead of suppressing cases entirely could be at fault for the spikes in cases.
• “Most states have reopened with a mitigation strategy in place rather than a suppression strategy,” she said, “and our view is that this is a mistake because it does not provide a sufficiently secure foundation for full opening and fully stable opening.”
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

States across the US are on the path to reopening their economies after months of a patchwork of “stay-at-home” orders put in place to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The White House released a set of criteria that states are recommended to meet before reopening. As of Friday, only seven states have met all of the criteria, according to a ProPublica analysis.

Coronavirus cases in the US have been on the rise, with the country recording the biggest jump in new cases within a 72-hour period earlier this week. A leaked CDC document named the US as the worst of 10 major countries in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Friday night, the US had reported over 2 million cases and more than 114,000 deaths.

Wow. The U.S. has recorded a 36% increase in daily COVID cases (rolling average of last three days), according to a CDC documented obtained by @YahooNews.

Most European countries dropping rapidly.

One expert said that as we address the rise in cases, the frame should be shifted from a focus on a “rushed reopening” towards a delay in establishing a cohesive testing and contact tracing strategy.

Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, joined more than 30 other cross-disciplinary experts to co-author detailed guidance, titled “Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done,” on the necessary levels of testing and tracing to safely reopen communities.

“I don’t think we rushed the reopening. I don’t think we did,” Allen told Business Insider. “What I think we failed to do was to build the tools of suppression. That’s what we failed to do.”

Allen said reopening the US came more-or-less “when it should have been,” but “we should have had those tools of suppression in place by the time we reopened.”

She told Business Insider that the discrepancy in the US’ shortcomings in dealing with the coronavirus lies in its approach of simply putting a band-aid over the problem rather than taking a head-on approach to suppress the disease.

“What our strategy boils down to fundamentally is a choice of suppression — getting back to near zero case incidents — as the right strategy rather than mitigation, which is just about slowing the spread,” Allen said.

“Most states have reopened with a mitigation strategy in place rather than a suppression strategy,” Allen told Business Insider, “and our view is that this is a mistake because it does not provide a sufficiently secure foundation for full opening and fully stable opening.”

“Basically what matters is that you need to be able to do enough testing to trace the chains of transmission and break the chains of transmission in order to suppress the disease and to get prevalence back down to near zero.”

As of June 12, the US has administered more than 23 million coronavirus tests, and nearly 2.5 million tests came back positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, the Harvard experts’ “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience” called for 5 million tests to be completed per day, which would be scaled up to 20 million tests per day by the end of July.

According to a report from Stat News at the end of April, many states fell short of the necessary testing levels needed to safely reopen by the start of May, which was when federal guidelines on social distancing expired.

She said the strategy of suppression has been used and thus far proven successful in a number of other countries, including Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and South Korea.

“This strategy of suppression has been used all over the world, … and the difference is really remarkable,” Allen said. “So where countries have really embraced full suppression — not just mitigation, but full suppression — they are doing much better.”

Taiwan saw GDP growth at 1.67% in the first quarter of this year — the slowest in five years — but it showed the country was on the road to economic recovery in light of the pandemic.

Though the US has already embarked on phased reopening in a number of states, Allen said there is still time to establish an unmitigated, proper testing and contact tracing system to suppress new cases and eventually achieve zero new incidents.

“I think a lot of people believed early on that this country did not have the capacity to achieve suppression and that’s just not true,” she said. “We do have the capacity to achieve suppression and we would be much better off if we did.”

“So it’s not the reopening that was rushed — it’s the delay to build the tools of suppression that’s the problem,” Allen added, “and people need to reorient the frame on that one.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Fauci says his advice for protests, campaign rallies is the same.

By

Anne Flaherty

June 12, 2020, 2:15 PM 8 min read 0:0429:22

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Friday that his advice for people who want to attend President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies is the same for anti-Trump protestors — any large group is “a danger” and “risky.” And if a person insists on going, they should wear a mask, especially when they are yelling or chanting, he said.

In an interview with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl on “Powerhouse Politics” podcast, Fauci said he understands the urge people have to participate in the political process. But he also said the safest bet is to avoid congregating in large groups.

“You know, it’s a danger to the people who are trying to control the demonstration,” he said of the recent political protests. “And it’s a danger to the people who are demonstrating. So at the end of the day, it is a risky procedure.”

When asked whether his advice also applies to Trump’s plans to resume campaign rallies next week, Fauci said yes: “I am consistent. I stick by what I say.”

The “best way that you can avoid — either acquiring or transmitting infection — is to avoid crowded places, to wear a mask whenever you’re outside. And if you can do both, avoid the congregation of people and do the mask, that’s great,” he said.

“If you’re going to be in a situation where — beyond your control there’s a lot of people around you — make sure you wear a mask,” he said.

Fauci’s comments come as the Trump campaign plans a massive rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next Friday. The arena holds some 19,000 people, and officials were discussing ways to try to mitigate the spread of the virus such as providing hand sanitizer and masks to attendees.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued specific guidelines for individuals attending larger events, strongly encouraging people to wear masks.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the leading scientific voice on COVID-19. His frank commentary — this week he told biotech executives the highly contagious respiratory infection was his “worst nightmare” — has often clashed with Trump and GOP supporters, who are pressing the country to reopen in a bid to restart the economy.

In recent weeks, the White House task force focused on coronavirus has faded in prominence. Fauci, who continues to give media interviews, told ABC’s Karl he hadn’t met with the president since last week but that the health officials remain in constant contact.

“We have not thrown in the towel,” he said.

Novel coronavirus cases in the U.S. have topped 2 million with 113,899 deaths, according to a recent count Friday afternoon by Johns Hopkins University.

A vaccine isn’t expected until 2021 and there’s only one drug — remdesivir — that has shown modest improvements in patients.

On the prospects of a vaccine, Fauci said he expects a safe one will be identified by the end of the year and that he has more confidence in a vaccine approved by U.S. or European authorities than by China.

“I know from experience that the material that has come out of there has been material that has not been first rate,” he said.

He later added: “I don’t have the confidence (in China’s government) that I have in our own regulatory authorities or in the European regulatory authorities.”

Fauci said he urges Americans not to take an either-or approach – being completely locked inside versus flouting masks and social distancing. He said there’s a way to take common-sense steps to be safe, namely just avoiding crowds and wearing a mask.

“My message is for people to please hang in there. We will get through this. This will end. It will end with a combination of public health measures and ultimately science coming in and getting durable solutions such as treatments and vaccines,” Fauci said.

An increase in hospitalizations across several states in recent days has been attributed to several factors, including the reopening of the economy, a disregard for social distancing guidelines, as well as Memorial Day weekend, on which many Americans flocked to crowded bars and packed pool parties that health officials warned against.

Fauci said it’s a matter of time before the impact of the recent protests and Trump’s upcoming political rally will be seen in terms of infections.

“Whenever you loosen mitigation, you can expect you’ll see new infections. I think it would be unrealistic to think that you won’t,” he told Karl.

“The critical issue is how do you prevent those new infections that you see from all of a sudden emerging into something that is a spike? And that’s the thing that we hope we’ll be able to contain. But time is going to tell in the next few weeks,” he added.

As for people insistent on ensuring their rally cries are heard by the government, Fauci pleaded with them to keep the mask up and covering their nose and mouth.

Trump’s rally — scheduled on Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery, in a city known for the 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre — could draw anti-Trump protesters as well as supporters. Fauci said he hopes people who insist on attending keep their masks on.

“When you start to chant and shout, even though the instinct is to pull the mask down, which you see, don’t do that because there is a risk there and it’s a real risk,” he said.

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